The facts proved one thing.
The rumors that Dumbledore could foresee everything and knew all things truly were only rumors.
While Iain was busy battling the mysterious diary in a contest of wits,
Dumbledore was in Hogsmeade.
He had just stepped out of Honeydukes.
In his left hand he carried a paper bag. Inside was a covered treacle tart, packed in Honeydukes' pink wrapping, with dancing Chocolate Frogs printed across it.
The old headmaster, still completely unaware of everything, looked as though he were deep in thought. He walked a few paces along the cobbled road and stopped outside a broom supplies shop.
"Albus."
A voice came from the left, pitched somewhere between a greeting and a challenge.
Dumbledore turned.
Minerva McGonagall stood beneath the awning of the broom shop, dressed in a dark blue travel cloak, her hair pulled into a very tight bun, and her expression very much like the one she wore when inspecting a student who had failed to do his homework. In her hand she held a sheet of parchment.
"Minerva." Dumbledore smiled and inclined his head to Professor McGonagall. "What a coincidence."
"Not in the slightest."
Professor McGonagall adjusted her glasses. There was no trace of small talk in her voice.
"I came here specifically to find you. We need to talk."
"Of course."
Dumbledore raised the paper bag in his hand, not asking what it was she wanted to discuss.
"I was just buying supper. Have you eaten?"
He sounded as though he were chatting with an old friend.
Professor McGonagall glanced at the Honeydukes bag, then at Dumbledore, and declined to exchange pleasantries. Instead, she went straight to the question that had been weighing on her for a long time.
"Albus, that boy... and the orphanage he came from... have you nothing at all to say about it?" Her eyes stayed fixed on the headmaster before her.
"You mean the Confundus Charm laid over the orphanage? Yes, certainly. Powerful. Impeccable. Far beyond the level an ordinary wizard could achieve."
Dumbledore's expression remained unchanged as he remarked upon it almost appreciatively.
"Why there? Why hide the orphanage's original identity beneath such a powerful Confundus Charm?" Professor McGonagall's unease was plain.
After all, as one of the people who knew the truth, she understood perfectly well who the last wizard to leave Iain's orphanage had been. Naturally, that made her mind wander in dangerous directions.
At the corner, a few young witches and wizards were buying chilled pumpkin juice, their laughter bouncing over the cobblestones. Dumbledore waited until they had walked out of earshot before speaking.
"Voldemort had no children. I know what you are worried about, and I can tell you this much: Voldemort is dead. The Death Eaters he left behind are not capable of something like this."
Dumbledore's voice was as calm as a windless lake, his tone certain.
Of course, he was lying.
When a man over a hundred lies, it can be truly terrifying.
McGonagall's lips pressed more tightly together.
"Very well, perhaps the Death Eaters could not." She had chosen her words with great care. In truth, it had taken real resolve for her to raise this topic in front of Dumbledore at all.
"But what about Grindelwald's followers?"
The air seemed to thicken at once.
Those words were like a stone thrown into still water.
Dumbledore's expression did not change, but McGonagall noticed the fingers holding the paper bag tighten slightly.
"We both know," McGonagall said softly, though every word was perfectly clear, "that the other one, the more terrible one, once had an obsession with ancient power."
She did not continue.
But the look in her eyes told Dumbledore everything else she meant to say.
Dumbledore was silent for a moment. The witches and wizards at the corner had already gone, and the owner of the broom shop leaned out once through his window, glanced at them, and ducked back inside.
"You may say his name directly," Dumbledore said quietly. "Gellert Grindelwald never placed magic on his own name."
"Of course, your concern may well be justified. I cannot dismiss the possibility you suspect, which is why I will not tell you that you are imagining things."
"I will investigate."
Dumbledore's promise was serious.
McGonagall nodded and lowered the arms she had folded across her chest.
"Good."
She turned to leave, walked two paces, then stopped. She did not look back, but her voice carried clearly to him.
"One more thing, Albus."
"Yes?"
"In that boy's bedroom, there was a stone capable of disrupting magic. That is why, once I was brought into the room, I could not escape."
Professor McGonagall's tone did not make it clear whether she was angry or not.
She had, after all, endured a rather miserable experience.
"The ornament beside the bed, yes? I noticed it as well when I entered. Enough to cover the entire room. A very interesting alchemical device."
Dumbledore's brows lifted slightly, and he smiled.
"A descendant of Merlin who has already awakened his magic having a few hidden safeguards left by some unseen protector is hardly unreasonable."
"Yes, perhaps that ornament truly was left behind by some wizard who meant to protect him." Professor McGonagall clearly found that explanation plausible enough.
But that was not her only reason for bringing it up.
"Even so, Albus, while under those conditions, I saw with my own eyes, in my Animagus form, that the boy could still move inanimate objects by thought alone."
"More than that, his speech itself carried enough magic to compel my actions in my own mind. That is not a power any ordinary child wizard ought to possess."
Professor McGonagall enunciated every syllable heavily.
"Unexpected things appearing in a descendant of Merlin are hardly unexpected at all, wouldn't you say?" Dumbledore blinked, as though intending to use that single line to close the matter.
"..."
Professor McGonagall fell silent for a long time.
"Do you understand what that means?"
At last, she still frowned and pressed the sharp question.
Dumbledore's smile did not fade.
"It means Hogwarts is about to welcome a student of exceptional talent. A true prodigy, the sort that draws the eye of everyone around him."
He seemed to have no concern whatsoever for darker possibilities.
And seeing the headmaster so entirely untroubled, Professor McGonagall could only sigh and give up on extracting anything further from him.
After working with the old headmaster for so many years, his deputy had long felt that Dumbledore was deliberately hiding something.
"I heard what you said about me at the orphanage. But let me say this plainly. I would never deliberately make things difficult for a child wizard. I am only worried that, under outside influences, the boy may lose himself in an obsession with power."
McGonagall's back remained straight and upright, open and honorable as always.
Her tone gave away nothing of her mood. Having said those words, she set off toward the castle, her dark blue travel cloak stirring lightly in the wind.
The deputy headmistress's figure soon vanished around the bend in the road.
Dumbledore remained where he was. The smile on his face gradually disappeared, leaving behind only something difficult and unreadable in his eyes. After a moment's silence, he turned and walked in the opposite direction.
Half an hour later.
Nurmengard.
The structure standing atop a peak somewhere in the Alps received a visitor.
A faint light showed in the tower window.
Dumbledore stepped out of thin air and onto the small platform before the tower. He lifted his eyes to that lit window, then went inside.
The door was not locked.
It never had been.
"Gellert, I've brought you your favorite treacle tart."
Dumbledore entered the top chamber, stepping into the narrow but impeccably clean room.
Someone sat in the chair within.
"This is your first visit in many years, and you've brought a gift... so what is it you want help with, Albus?"
The old man seated with his back to Dumbledore did not even turn around. He simply sat in the chair and stared up at the barren wall.
"For reasons somewhat unusual, I was overcome by curiosity and ended up doing something deeply improper."
Dumbledore spoke with quiet self-mockery.
"Oh?"
The old man in the chair did not waste words, nor did he mock him.
"I went through, without the owner's permission, a pile of discarded notebooks tossed into a corner by a young wizard, and among a stack of deliberately fabricated journals, I found a story."
Dumbledore did not circle the point.
He went straight to it.
"You cannot possibly imagine what I felt in that moment, and so I want to know..."
Dumbledore set the tart on the table and sat down opposite him. From inside his robes he drew a manuscript that looked almost as though it had been sketched into existence.
"Can a prophet powerful enough truly see the entire future? And can such a prophet..."
Dumbledore's tone was grave.
There was even a thread of tension in it.
He paused for a long time before continuing.
"Can such a prophet become powerful enough... to twist the past?"
The question came low and eerie from Dumbledore's lips, and it finally drew the old prisoner's full attention.
"Albus, has something finally gone wrong with your mind?"
Gellert Grindelwald, once the most powerful dark wizard in the world, turned at last and first cast a glance at his old friend and ancient rival with those striking mismatched eyes.
Then,
his gaze fell to the manuscript on the table.
It read:
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
On the first page of the manuscript,
exquisitely careful yet unmistakably childish handwriting was reflected in the eyes of a legend from long ago.